Obamacare Losing Power as Campaign Weapon in Ad Battles

Activists on both sides of the contraceptive debate demonstrate outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., U.S. Photographer: Pete Marovich/Bloomberg

Aug. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Republicans seeking to unseat the
U.S. Senate incumbent in North Carolina have cut in half the
portion of their top issue ads citing Obamacare, a sign that the
party’s favorite attack against Democrats is losing its punch.

The shift -- also taking place in competitive states such
as Arkansas and Louisiana -- shows Republicans are easing off
their strategy of criticizing Democrats over the Affordable Care
Act now that many Americans are benefiting from the law and the
measure is unlikely to be repealed.

“The Republican Party is realizing you can’t really hang
your hat on it,” said Andrew Taylor, a political science
professor at North Carolina State University. “It just isn’t
the kind of issue it was.”

The party had been counting on anti-Obamacare sentiment to
spur Republican turnout in its quest for a U.S. Senate majority,
just as the issue did when the party took the House in 2010.
This election is the first since the law was fully implemented.

Now, Republicans are seeking a new winning formula, with
the midterm election less than three months away. Republican
pollster Whit Ayres, who has advised U.S. Senate candidates
including Marco Rubio of Florida, said the party is pausing to
reframe the ads by tying the health law to the economy and jobs,
the top concerns for most Americans.

Attack Testing

“Obamacare will not be the most important issue,” and
Republicans will have to “target people very directly” with
their messages, said Ayres, who co-wrote a memo this month for
outside spending groups such as Crossroads GPS and the American
Action Network. The memo came after Ayres tested 57 possible
avenues of attack.

Ayres said another round of health-care ads may drop next
month when premium increases take effect after state regulators
finish negotiating with insurers on 2015 rates, he said.

“Obamacare remains of serious concern,” his memo said,
“garnering significant opposition among Republicans and
widespread criticism among independents, who are suspicious of
the law’s Washington-driven approach.”

Still, the party’s experience across the country shows that
Republicans can’t count on the issue to motivate independent
voters they need to oust Democrats in Arkansas, Louisiana and
Alaska. And in North Carolina, the ads being run against Senator
Kay Hagan also underline the limits of the health-care law as a
political topic.

Negative Ads

Republicans have accused Hagan of casting the deciding vote
on the law, when it passed in 2010 and became President Barack
Obama’s biggest legislative initiative. Yet even with more than
$4 million in negative ads aimed at the law this year, Hagan is
in a statistical tie with her Republican challenger, Thom
Tillis, in recent polls.

In April, anti-Obamacare advertising dwarfed all other
spots in North Carolina. It accounted for 3,061, or 54 percent,
of the 5,704 top five issue ads in North Carolina, according to
Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group. By July, the
numbers had reversed, with anti-Obamacare ads accounting for
971, or 27 percent, of the top issue ads, and the budget,
government spending, jobs and unemployment accounting for 2,608,
or 72 percent, of such ads, CMAG data show.

Economy Focus

“It is a recognition that there’s more going on in this
state and also nationally than just frustration over
Obamacare,” said Jordan Shaw, Tillis’s campaign manager. “We
have never had an approach to make this campaign all about the
Affordable Care Act. You can’t have a conversation about
Obamacare without talking about its impact on the economy.”

The Republican approach, long defined by a “repeal and
replace” mantra, is also challenged by a policy void, said
Jennifer Duffy, a Senate analyst at the nonpartisan Cook
Political Report. “You can’t really repeal it without creating
a mess,” she said, “and the problem is they’re not entirely
sure what to replace it with.”

In another reflection of the party’s efforts to put its
campaign against the health law in a broader context, the House
voted last month to sue Obama over its implementation. House
Republicans said the president exceeded his constitutional
powers in delaying one of the measure’s central requirements on
his own, without a vote of Congress.

Pryor’s Contest

The situation is much the same in Arkansas, where Mark
Pryor is trying to keep his Senate seat, and Louisiana, where
Mary Landrieu is in a tight race for a fourth term. The health
law was just about the only issue on the air in Louisiana in
April, according to CMAG. By July, it had dropped to 41 percent
of the top five issue ads, and in Arkansas just 23 percent.

The ads have diminished as insurance coverage has expanded
in North Carolina. About 581,000 people in the state had signed
up for private plans under the law by April, 54 percent of the
potential market, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a
nonprofit research group.

Nationwide, Obamacare has exceeded enrollment projections
since March as its troubled website has been fixed. Premiums in
the insurance marketplaces are expected to increase only
modestly in most states, and the percentage of uninsured
Americans has dropped significantly, said Drew Altman, president
of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

“When they righted the ship, it no longer was as effective
a weapon to use to hit Democrats over the head with,” he said.

‘Caught Up’

Rose Duke, a 44-year-old from Raleigh who cast her ballot
for Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election, is
one of the law’s new beneficiaries. Duke, who lost her flooring
business after her husband died last year, says she now has a
favorable view of the measure and is angry at her state’s
Republican governor, Pat McCrory, for refusing to expand
Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

Duke has a diabetic daughter who was initially denied
health-insurance coverage because of the state’s swollen
Medicaid rolls.

“My child got caught up in the political B.S.,” she said.
“I had to walk in there and beg them for help,” said Duke, who
eventually got coverage from Medicaid, the federal-state program
for lower-income Americans.

The dialing down of the Obamacare offensive coincides with
the public’s relative lack of attention to the issue.

Just 5 percent of Americans identified health care as the
most important problem facing the U.S., after the economy and
jobs at 22 percent and immigration at 13 percent, in a July 29-Aug. 4 CBS News poll. In November 2010 -- at the last midterm
election -- a CBS survey ranked health care as the second-most
important issue, at 17 percent, after unemployment and jobs.

‘Getting Less’

The ad that has run the most in North Carolina,
sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, an outside spending group
founded by the billionaire Koch Brothers, proclaims that
millions of Americans have lost insurance, can’t see their own
doctors and are “paying more and getting less.”

Another features a self-employed Chapel Hill woman named
Sheila Salter who says her policy was canceled and that she’ll
be paying $4,500 a year more for insurance.

The challenge for Republicans is there may not be enough
people losing coverage who can relate to the broadcast messages,
to move the public-opinion needle.

According to a Gallup survey this month, the rate of
uninsured people has dropped in all except five states. Two
critical states, Arkansas and Kentucky, had the biggest
declines. In Arkansas, the rate of people without health
insurance fell from 22.5 percent in 2013 to 12.4 percent in
mid-2014.

Economic Concern

Further, recent survey data show the number of people
affected by canceled health-care policies was about 1.9 million
nationally, less than the 4.8 million often cited in the run-up
to the health program’s launch last year, according to the
journal Health Affairs.

According to the memo by Ayres, the Republican pollster,
arguments against Obamacare that resonate most with independent
voters are economic. These include the law’s cost to taxpayers;
concern that it discourages some employers from hiring full-time
workers, and that it will lead to higher premiums and co-payments for some in the private insurance market.

The Republican messages on Obamacare and other issues have
“become more diluted” now that it is the law of the land, said
Elizabeth Wilner, CMAG’s vice president. “There is more
material to use for messaging but they’re not sure which one
works best.”